There is! Son of a bitch! I sense a disaster here. A monumental disaster. And I thought I was escaping here to peace and tranquility. “Why is that human being not getting off the plane?” he asked very slowly, hoping desperately that his suspicions were unfounded.
“Because the human being is tied up.” J.B. also spoke very slowly.
Tied up? They kidnapped someone and brought that someone here. Holy shit! Holy freakin’ shit! I am getting the mother of all headaches. St. Jude, where are you? I could use a little help.
A voice in his head replied, Not when you use bad language. Tsk, tsk, tsk!
It was either St. Jude, or he was losing his mind. He was betting on the latter.
“A network TV anchor?” he finally asked, even though he was fairly certain they weren’t that crazy. Best to make sure, though. “Did you kidnap a major network TV reporter?”
“Not quite,” Maddie said.
Not the answer I want to hear. He addressed Maddie, slicing her with his best icy glare. “What the hell does ‘not quite,’ mean?”
“Not from a major network.” She glanced at her husband and said, “I told you René would get mad.”
Mad doesn’t begin to express how I’m feeling. “What the hell does ‘not from a major network’ mean?”
“She’s a court TV reporter. And you don’t have to yell.”
You haven’t heard yelling yet, Maddie girl. “She? You kidnapped a female celebrity?” His headache had turned into a sledgehammer, and it was doing the rumba against his brain.
He looked at Tante Lulu, and Tante Lulu looked at him. At the same time they swung around to the dingbat duo and exclaimed, “Valerie Breaux!”
“Yep,” the dingbat duo said together.
“You kidnapped Valerie ‘Ice’ Breaux?” René choked out. “The Trial Television Network anchor? My sister-in-law Rachel’s cousin?”
J.B. and Maddie beamed at him as if he’d just congratulated them, not raised a question in horror.
“Why her?” he asked through gritted teeth. Valerie Breaux was such a straight arrow she would probably turn her mother in for tasting the grapes in the supermarket.
J.B. shrugged. “She was available. She’s from Louisiana. I heard she had a crush on you at one time.”
“You heard wrong. Valerie Breaux can’t stand my guts.”
“Oops,” Maddie said.
“Maybe you could charm her,” J.B. advised. “You can be damn charming with the ladies when you wanna be.”
“Charm that!” he said, giving J.B. the finger. Luckily, Tante Lulu didn’t see him.
“She’s the answer to our prayers,” Maddie asserted.
“Oh, no! She cain’t be the one,” Tante Lulu wailed, now that the implications of their conversation sank in. “I won’t let that snooty girl be the one. I remember the time she asked me iffen I ever looked in a mirror, jist cause I tol’ her she could use a good girdle? She’s not even Cajun. She’s a Creole. Her blue blood’s so blue she gives the sky a bad name. She looks down on us low-down Cajuns. Take her back. I doan want her to be the one fer René. St. Jude, do somethin’ quick.”
René’s jaw dropped open. He wasn’t sure which surprised him most: that his friends considered Valerie Breaux the answer to their prayers, the woman who’d called him a “crude Cajun asshole” more than once while they were growing up together in Houma, or that Tante Lulu feared this woman might be his soul mate. As if the Ice Princess would let him touch her with a ten-foot pole, let alone his own lesser-sized pole!
Could life get any worse?
Yep!
J.B. had waded out to his hydroplane and was now carrying the “answer to their prayers” over his shoulder. She was squirming wildly but unable to say anything because, of course, the goofballs had duct-taped her mouth shut. That was at least one felony count, plus who knew how many more for the restraints that bound her wrists behind her back and held her ankles together.
But that wasn’t the worst thing of all… or best thing of all, depending on one’s viewpoint. And René was taking in the view with wide-open eyes right now: Valerie Breaux’s bare white behind.